The fall semester is in full swing and so is Fairfield University’s Arts & Minds season!

New Orleans’ own Hot 8 Brass Band will take the stage at the Quick Center for the Arts on Friday, September 28 at 8 p.m. Hot 8 is synonymous with the New Orleans’ street music scene and has been for more than a decade. And they’ll begin their appearance at Fairfield with a Crescent City tradition – a Second Line parade through campus stepping off from the Quick Center to the Barone Campus Center. Watch for it!

Are you mad for murder and mayhem? Are you a sucker for sound effects? Have we got a show for you! The Quick Center’s crack troupe is back with an evening or two of live radio drama, Criminals and Evil Deeds. Complete with over-the-top vintage commercials and snappy dialogue, they’ll take you back to a time when entertainment had nothing to do with the Jersey shore or Hell’s Kitchen. Get your tickets today for one of three performances – Friday, September 28 at 8 p.m. or Saturday, September 29 at 3 and 8 p.m.

Feeling a bit bookish? Enjoy readings from emerging authors at Mason’s Road Writers Night on Friday, September 28 at the Fairfield University Bookstore, 1499 Post Road, Fairfield. This evening, which begins at 6 p.m. and is free and open to the public, features a reading from Olivia Kate Cerrone, who won the 2012 Literary Award from Mason’s Road, a literary and arts journal that is part of Fairfield’s MFA in Creative Writing. Cerrone will be joined by fellow writers Lauren K. Johnson, Jillian Ross and Jacob M. Appel for a night of fiction, poetry, drama and, most of all, inspiration!

The Quick’s Open VISIONS Forum series continues on Monday, October 1 with Dana Perino and Donna Brazile: “America at the Crossroads: Election 2012,” the seventh annual Students Forum. Sure to be thought provoking, this evening pairs Perino, George W. Bush’s press secretary, with Brazile, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, in a timely conversation just days before the first presidential debate. The inaugural Open VISIONS Forum of the 2012-13 season sold out, so get your tickets today.

October 1 also marks the opening of an art exhibition by Duane Corey, one of Fairfield’s own public safety officers! Corey, who has been painting since he was a teenager, paints a host of images, but he’s particularly fond of baseball stars of the old Negro League. Come see his vivid works hanging all month in the stairwell of the Fairfield University Bookstore, 1499 Post Road, Fairfield.

Speaking of timely topics, Fairfield’s Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions presents “Urban Educational Reform” with Connecticut Commissioner of Education Stefan Pryor on Tuesday, October 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the Quick Center. Dr. Pryor’s talk will focus on Connecticut’s education reform law, which is designed to transform both teaching and learning and eliminate the state’s highest-in-the-nation achievement gap. Join us for this intriguing lecture, which is free and open to the public.

The Center for Catholic Studies kicks off its always popular lecture series this fall with Dr. Francine Cardman, who will deliver the 12th annual Anne Drummey O’Callaghan Lecture on Women in the Church. Dr. Cardman, associate professor of historical theology and church history at Boston College, will give a speech entitled “Conciliar Women: Precedents and Portents” at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 3. The event is free and open to the public.

Round out the week with Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about the lengths to which four desperate real estate agents will go to keep their jobs in a high pressure Chicago office. A cross-campus endeavor, the play will be presented by The Humanities Institute of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Charles F. Dolan School of Business in collaboration with the Quick Center. Events begin on Tuesday, October 2 with a free 7 p.m. panel discussion on the play at the Fairfield University Bookstore, 1499 Post Road, Fairfield. The play itself runs from Wednesday, October 3 through Saturday, October 6 at 8 p.m. at the Quick Center for the Arts, with a post-performance talkback with Fairfield faculty each night. Purchase your tickets today.